The Angel in Question
by DaMick
Summary: Set during the Girl in Question. Some alternate scenes played through Angels mind and make him make a slightly different decision. Please Review.


Oh you have got to be kidding me. Buffy and the Immortal? Angel feels Spike beside him as they shoulder their way into the loud and bouncing club filled with dancers and drunks. Everything will be alright if I can only find her. They move together filtering through the masses in the direction of the soft tug on his heartstrings. She's here. The people between him and his target filter enough to where he can see the reflection off bouncing brilliant bright blond hair. The smell of that hair fills his nostrils and causes a reaction so basic as an animal recognizing its mate. No, there is not a single way in hell he's going to leave her to be with _that_. Spike fades out of his consciousness as Angel stares hard at the back of the man dancing with her.

He shoulders forward through the dancers heedless of how they brush against him. A few get knocked out of his way when they don't see him coming but he ignores them just as easily. In a few seconds he has crossed what feels like miles and is close enough to reach out an arm and be able to touch her skin again. He longs to complete that simple action and bring her against his chest. She spins suddenly and he notices her shoulder dropped indicating her ready blow for his head. He makes no sudden moves but smiles the only way he can when he's around her. Gradually her feet unfreeze and turn her to face him fully, the immortal stationary to her right about a foot and a half away ignored from both ends of their locked gaze.

"Angel." His name, spoken as a sigh, cracks through the wall around his heart. In an instant she is in his arms and their lips are crushing against each other. This is right. This is how it's supposed to be. He picks her up and her oh so strong legs wrap around his waist putting delightful pressure in exactly the right spot. Her scent has changed to excite him even further and their tongues are doing what their bodies cannot. The heat and passion between them grow exponentially and their hands run crazily against each other's lithe forms, forms they've both still got memorized despite the time apart. Finally he pulls slightly aback from her as he senses another change about her and manages to get her name past his lips.

"Buffy." Her excited smile and brightly flashing eyes change at one, the one morphing as her face stretches and fangs grow quickly as her eyes glow the golden predatory gleam of a hungry vampire. Faster than he can react she has slashed toward his throat and he jerks back quickly.

The crowd parts again and he glimpses her hair spin in a different direction. He shakes his head to get the loose remnants of his fantasy and nightmare combo vision out of his mind. His eyes focus on his objective and he steels himself against a repeat of his last meeting with the Immortal. He moves carefully around the other club goers using the inherent grace of his kind and within moments has made his way to her side. She stops herself with the Immortal's arm and steps inside it, pressing herself up against his long time rival as she regards him with haunted eyes. Haunted, he'd like to think, because she was being hypnotized by the beast beside her and the real Buffy was fighting to get out.

"Buffy." He says her name as though it conveys everything in itself that she needs to know about why he's here and who he is now. Her face tells him nothing about her understanding of such and he realizes that there really is so much more to say. He opens his mouth to say it but is cut off by the pretentious and deeply reverberating voice of the man he would easily kill a dozen times a day if it would make any kind of difference at all.

"The lady is here with me tonight. I'd appreciate it if you could extricate yourself from the premises of _my_ club and perhaps, when she is disposed to do so, the lady will contact _you_." The cultured tones of haughty arrogance and utmost power. The rude concepts wrapped in the butter melt sweet taste of the unerringly polite. The honey running down his spine gives him chills and he felt the urge to respond as though it was his father talking down to him after he had just been turned. He mentally jerked away from that concept and blinked to find Buffy's gaze centered lovingly on that bastard's face. Slowly she looked back at him and it was with that same thinly veiled contempt he read on the face of her lover. An ant could have crushed him accidentally if one had been passing by at that moment. He lowered his head and let his eyes fall closed.

He opened them in time to see the dancing, bouncing hair move of its own volition just past Spike's shoulder. Spike, who was looking at him as if he had just lost the last of his marbles and spoke as though he was repeating himself, which he probably was now that Angel thought of it.

"Where's the head?"

"I thought you had it." Both vampires turn as one back toward the bar and the scurrying waiter picking up the bag and making for the door.

"Bloody hell." Spike's curse echoes across the stillness that has become Angel. He turns back slowly in the direction he'd been facing before and this time it's not the hair that catches his eyes. Green orbs framed with the most perfect cheekbones in the world and underscored by the bright blond naturally falling hair stare out of the crowd into his soul. Vaguely the concept of leaving Spike to fight for the head in the bag sparks a single echo as the sounds of a brawl break out across the crowd, but his feet are moving him forward. One last scenario plays its way through his head, one he only pays half his attention to for fear of losing those eyes also steadily moving toward him.

He's the head of Wolfram and Hart, he can have Wesley or one of his other magically inclined employees find a way to anchor his soul and make it safe for the two heroes to be together without the pain of destruction and death that always seem to have punctuated their relationship before. He sees himself telling her his plan over coffee, the noncommittal nonrelationship drink of choice, and her eyes flashing the answering naughty little thoughts behind the surface. He sees them flying back together never more than inches apart and promising her all the assistance he has to offer to the fledgling watcher's council. He sees them together in his apartment, in his city, and her getting settled in enough to leave the cap off the toothpaste. He blinks for the first time since his feet began moving him of their own will and smiles his special smile when he sees she hasn't disappeared, hasn't looked away, hasn't stopped moving. They stop just inches apart, his arms aching to slide the rest of the distance around her, and she looks brightly up into his eyes.

"Buffy." She smiles and he knows she's understood everything that one word means to him. Their arms move together to bring the other close and everything else, Spike, the Immortal, the head bag, the moral dilemma of letting W&H make him happy, fades into the background.

"Very nice. Way to take the bait, Angel." Somewhere a world away a man lays on a bed staring at the scene playing out on his ceiling a second before the mist moves back in, concealing it from view. The slight form of the steadily stripping eve moves across the room and, naked, slides into bed beside him as his chuckle grows in mirth and volume. Oh yes, he reflects, we've got him now.


End file.
